


they hate to see a girlboss winning

by arbitrarily



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Fight Sex, Frottage, Oral Sex, Sibling Incest, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:47:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28992414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: You can never fault a woman for taking what she wants. Or, at least, that's what Shiv has always believed.
Relationships: Roman "Romulus" Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	they hate to see a girlboss winning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lolahaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolahaze/gifts).



> This is set immediately following episode 2.06 "Argestes." Additional warning for references to canonical abuse and references to child abuse. 
> 
> And, uh, I couldn't resist the title, lol. Happy Chocolate Box!

She’s the last person Roman wants to see, if she’s judging by facial expression (tired scowl), sound effect (“ _ugh_ ”), and body language (specifically, blocking entrance with the width of his shoulders). Shiv’s shoulders are broader; she barrels into him and then past him as he stumbles back against the wall.

“Ow, what the fuck?” He massages the ball of his shoulder as he shuts the door. He’s a baby. “Haven’t I been on the receiving end of enough family-friendly battery today?”

Shiv ignores him. When it comes to the whining, be it from her brothers or her husband, she always does. She turns from him, considering his lodgings instead. Roughly the same size as hers, despite her late arrival, so no insult to be found there. Shiv is very good at looking for insult.

Roman’s set-up is decorated in that same ski lodge-chic as the rest of this place. Exposed beams, purposefully aged wood covering every surface—floors, walls, ceiling—with cozy earth-colored blankets and knits strewn over leather upholstery. She hates this shit. But other than a couple of empty glasses scattered about, you can scarcely tell that Roman has been here. He has a funny habit of that, despite all the noise he makes. He can slip into any setting, easy to miss. He has a way about him of making himself near invisible but for his voice. There’s something dangerous about that; makes her think of a knife. She doesn’t care for it. She turns back to him. Roman has his arms folded over his chest, his eyebrows are raised expectantly, and his jaw is swollen only a little.

“How’s the tooth?” Shiv plays at casual deceptively, easily. He looks at her, unimpressed, as if her effort is in vain, any trouble gone into it making her all the more obvious.

“Well, y’know. MIA, a fallen fucking soldier. My mouth hurts like Bigfoot fucked it.”

“Charming.”

“Yup. So. What the fuck gives? I’m gonna assume you’re not here to help me lick my wounds.” There’s something sharp in his tone despite the goading slurry. Like he means to draw blood—hers, this time. She has an idea of what he’s getting at, and she doesn’t like it. Much as it was earlier, it was always Kendall who stepped in when their father reached for both violence and Roman. There’s an accusation folded into him now, from his words to his posture to the way he’s looking at her, and fuck him for that. What the hell was she supposed to do? Take the hit for him?

“Maybe I am.”

He doesn’t so much laugh as he says the word, “ _Ha!_ ” He raises his hand as if to rub at his mouth and then thinks better of it, recognizing anew the throb in his jaw. “You came by to play nurse? Because I’m gonna be honest, sis—you’re far more Ratched than you are Nightingale.” He places his hand on his hip and then cocks it. “Wanna check my prostate while you’re here?”

Shiv ignores that, too.

“You missed the roast,” she says instead. Roman makes a noncommittal noise paired with a jerk-off motion of his curled fist. “But then,” she adds, leading, as cautiously seductive as slipping a leash on a rabid dog, “so did Dad.” She shrugs. “Most of it, anyway.”

“What? Say it ain’t so, the old man got his feelings hurt?” There is a biting, nearly hopeful edge to that. Shiv’s used to most things that Roman does to be empty and performative, goofy for the sake of it. She doesn’t need to be a fucking licensed therapist, or to see one for the better part of the last decade and change, to know that humor is absolutely, transparently, one-hundred percent a coping mechanism for Roman. This isn’t that, she’s pretty sure. For once, Roman isn’t kidding. Right now, he wants their dad to hurt. He wants somebody else to hurt, too.

“Not quite. He was chasing after his golden goose, Nan Pierce.”

“Oh fuck,” Roman laughs, an ugly barking sound. “That Mayflower bitch went overboard, huh?”

Shiv rolls her eyes. Not even twenty-four hours since that story broke and Roman has already exhausted the limit for cruise-based humor. “The deal’s fucked.”

Roman snorts. “Uh, yeah. No shit. You’re telling me Nan Pierce didn’t want to hop into international waters with a crew of rowdy, seafaring rapists? Well, I never. Color me shocked.”

Shiv brushes a loose strand of hair off her face. “I thought you might be curious.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Fucking curious.” His eyes narrow, silently working something out. “So you can't be surprised when I ask you, yet again, what’s got you curious enough to stop by to see little ol' me?”

“Nothing,” she says. That's not entirely true. She’s been desperate for answers since they came back from Tern Haven. Since that dinner table. She wants to know what happens next. She wants to know the timeline. She wants to stop feeling as if she must desperately prove herself, not just to their father, but to her brothers, too. She thought she spied pity in the way that Kendall looked to her, in their father’s apartment, before everything went tits up, yet again. Pity, from Kendall. Jesus; it’s intolerable. There’s nothing pitying or sympathetic in the way that Roman is looking at her now though. He’s seeking out a motive.

“Do you think you represent Dad?” There’s mockery but more than that there's menace threaded through his voice; it makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck. It’s not Roman's usual brand, threat by way of the court jester, but as if he thinks himself her actual adversary. “You think it’s you he’d choose?”

“He did. I was there. He gave it to me.”

Roman’s mouth flutters, as if he can’t decide if he wants to smile or sneer. A laugh tries to form itself but is cut off by his rancor.

“You know it’s not actually gonna be you, right?” he finally says. “You have to know you fucked that one but good.” He pauses. Shiv exhales through her nose. “You do know that, don’t you? What with your liberal agenda and your poor dinner party manners and, well, let’s be honest here, that pair of tits you carry around with you certainly doesn’t do you any favors, now does it, dickless.”

Shiv can feel her face flush. It’s anger, it’s always that, her temper the most easily accessible thing about her, but there’s more to it. Shame, maybe. Sometimes, too often lately, she finds herself thinking of Kendall, that night in their father’s office. _Yeah, it ain’t gonna be me._ That was what he said, and at the time, it was so stupidly stunning to hear something honest, pure, least of all from him. She didn’t know what else to do but offer him a scant amount of her sympathy. She felt scared then, and she still feels it now. Nauseous and seasick, afraid. Cast out. To have any of that recognized or seen, least of all by Roman, only makes her angrier.

“Oh my god,” she laughs. Humorless, the sound forced out. “You stupid motherfucker. You actually think it could be you. You actually think you’re anything more than a whipping boy to him.”

Roman’s on her immediately.

Unlike Shiv, there’s no actual form to how Roman fights. He throws punches and he launches himself at her like a drunk in a brawl defending some deeply personal crossed sense of honor. Shiv learned to fight both from these frequent scraps with Roman and from twice-a-week overpriced cardio kickboxing. Her uppercuts have precision, her stamina informed by thirty minute classes designed more with toned muscles, and maybe anger management, than a prizefight in mind. Still, she aims for his solar plexus and when he wheezes, his forehead knocking into her cheekbone, the both of them too hard-headed for it to actually hurt, she knows her aim was true. In retaliation, breathing like an asthmatic who took their first hit off a joint, Roman reaches up. He grabs and squeezes her breast, seeking her nipple to twist but missing. It still fucking hurts and Shiv yelps, pulling a yowl out of Roman when she shoves the heel of her hand against his swollen jaw.

Like any other Roy, neither of them fight fair.

Their preteen and teenage years were largely dominated by this mutual violence between them. “You’d think you want to kill the boy,” Caroline would say after someone (Kendall, usually) broke them up, as if she couldn’t recognize the same impulse in Roman. But maybe it was Shiv who was wrong and the impulse was never there, not for him. Maybe Shiv has misunderstood Roman her entire life—it’s defense and never offense for him. And maybe that’s the worst thing you can say about her: like their father, she understands the desire to hit him, make him pay for everything.

Now, they fight hard and in earnest against each other, defense and offense blurred, strategy absent. She can’t remember the last time they carried on like this—maybe when Dad first had his stroke. Even then, there was still a thread of restraint that both tied them together and held them back. As she rears back from Roman, she stops trying to remember. Shiv never actually thinks anything in moments like this, and she doesn't want to be thinking now. Mind blank, everything rooted in the physical and the conquerable.

Because that’s it, isn’t it? This is just another way to win.

Shiv crashes down bodily to the floor, landing hard enough on her ass to knock a grunt out of her. Roman pounces. She tries to hold him off, her hand curled and clawed against the cut of muscle between neck and shoulder, threatening to go for his throat if he doesn’t stop. His back arches as he pulls back from her. His legs still part and his body settles against her thigh. The angle’s wrong and it hurts. Shiv’s heel skids against the floor as she tries to buck him off; she spits out something that sounds like, “You fucking asshole.”

Neither of them has the stamina for this to last much longer, even as the fight goes sideways and ugly, alternative words, she supposes, for carnal. Panting for breath, she knees Roman weakly in the gut when she feels the flex of his thigh muscles around her own, tensed beneath him. She can feel his dick against her, filling out, and something hot and sickening rises within her. His weight shifts and he huffs out a breath, his body curling forward as he tries to rut against her.

“You’re sick,” she hears herself say. Her voice is tight and low and mean and somehow very faraway. “You’re nothing more than a fucking dog.” Shiv stills long enough to watch the bob of Roman's throat as he swallows, the way his eyes flutter in the pause before he lashes out harder against her. He pushes her down against the floor, one hand latching below her wrist to prevent her from trying anything further against him. His fingernails are blunt but threaten to break the skin and when she rolls her hips up under him, she tells herself it’s only in retaliation.

It used to get weird like this, sometimes, when they were younger and they’d fight and they were alone. They never talked about it, but then, they never talked about anything. They would get each other to the ground and Roman would rub off on her and Shiv would pretend she couldn’t feel anything but the heat of her own blood, her pulse as it hammered. The truth of it though was that Shiv liked it. There was a great deal of power to be found in it, previously never afforded to her: a man—well, a boy; her brother—willing to debase himself. Because of her.

Maybe it’s in the spirit of that, the quest for further dominance, that serves as the excuse for what she does next. She struggles against him, and as Roman presses his weight harder against her, as he bends down, she meets him. She kisses him. They’ve never done that before, affection reserved as something to be given to other people if ever offered at all. It’s not a particularly good kiss, still fueled by the waning energy of the fight. Her mouth feels firm and thin against his as he pants against her closed mouth. She can feel it though, a tremor that seizes through his body, thrumming against her own. He freezes, her mouth on his knocking him off center, and it’s easy enough to convince herself that this was her solitary goal. Her mouth parts as she breathes in and Roman presses his advantage. He kisses her sloppily, with neither restraint or finesse, and when his tongue pushes against the closed seam of her mouth she finds, against her better judgment, against pride, against a host of things she chooses to define herself by, that she opens to him. She kisses him back, pretending now this wasn't anything she started. It’s a highly underrated skill, to be able to lie to yourself so well it becomes your own reality. That you forget the lie. The problem arises only when you believe another liar. She closes her eyes as the kiss deepens and as she does all too often, she returns to their father’s office, sunny and white and bright, the beach that waited outside his windows too cold and windy. She had believed him. She still believes him.

Here is an actual truth: Shiv is angry and bitter, and she is lonely. No one can possibly understand what it means to be a Roy but a Roy themselves, and there is no more alienating thought than that. Who could possibly be more dangerous to show yourself to, to be seen by, than family. The kiss runs long, and Shiv loses her place. Roman takes advantage. A hard hit to her ribs makes her teeth snap shut, biting his tongue. She can taste blood as he draws himself up and off of her, before he shoves her, turning her onto her side against the hardwood floor, and she goes with it. Breathing hard, she she lets Roman manipulate her body. She lets him do what he wants. 

Roman gets her down on her hands and knees and that fucking hurts, too. There’s a coiled strength in him, in the hands that grab at her and push her around, and that’s good, that’s better. It’d be pathetic to allow anyone weaker to touch her like this. Shiv gasps, pain singing through her scalp when Roman takes up a handful of her hair and pulls. It draws an electric line straight down, from her head to her cunt, zipping past her heart. She makes a snarling noise, still able to taste him—metallic, bloody, meat, male. She would bet money and her place as Logan’s rightful heir that she’s stronger than him—in every considerable stripe—but she doesn’t try, not really, to stop him. She ignores the very simple fact that she could overpower him. She tells herself instead that he has her pinned. That he’s the one making this happen. Deviant, twisted, fucked—that’s him, not her. He’s the one who’s sick. It’s never her who does anything wrong; she only ever does what she has to.

She can’t help but think of Tom, the other night. He sat there at their dinner table, his body poised tense as if expecting interrogation rather than mediocre Thai takeout. He looked down at his dish rather than at her when he finally spoke. “Do you ever think,” he said, “you know—how what you do, and I don’t mean all the time, just sometimes, occasionally, these things that—you, that you do—do you ever think about how they might—well—how they could hurt? Me? How you hurt me sometimes?” He was still mastering the art of emotional confrontation, largely still failing at it.

“What?” Shiv said. “What are you talking about?" She let her voice go dismissive, irritated instead of angry. "It has nothing to do with you," she said. "I’m just doing what I have to do.”

Roman yanks her pants and her panties down roughly, She shivers against the scratch of his fingernails, this time along her thighs. She’s pale enough, he’ll have most like left a mark. She knows two things for certain: first, she will trace over those reddened lies later in pursuit of something grounding and real like shame, she will see out that twist in her stomach, and second, that Tom will never ask her about them.

Shiv drops her head, breathing hard. She can hear her brother undressing; she doesn't look. Behind her, Roman pushes against her, a pantomime of fucking. She knows Roman’s dick only by feel, never sight. Prior experience tells her that he's unremarkable, neither particularly long or thick, though always felt beneath both his clothes and hers. The shock of him now against the back of her thigh—hot flesh, undeniable, wet at the tip already—is enough to make her choke down a moan.

Roman takes that as encouragement. “Yeah, yeah,” he is saying, the word mangled by the push of his cock against her ass. She shudders when she feels his hands on her, spreading her. Exposed, her cunt clenches emptily but wet, and the noise Roman makes is wordless but loud. The head of his cock pushes between her ass cheeks, and she swallows down any sound she might have made.

His fingers bite into her hips as he works himself against her. The occasional, incidental press of him against her cunt leaves her that much hungrier. She rocks her hips back against him and Roman is panting openly now. It's borderline hilarious how little time it takes to get him worked up and neither worked over. She can feel the wet smear of him against her ass, the slackness to his rhythm now.

“Don’t you dare get come on my sweater,” Shiv manages to spit out. There’s a litany of insults trapped in her throat that can’t seem to make their way out. Roman makes a breathy noise that could mean anything. She thinks he might do it, just to spite her, but instead she feels the ridge of his knuckles against the swell of her ass as he grabs at himself. He angles his cock down, the head bumping against her cunt, as his come splatters against the wood floor beneath her.

Shiv takes a shuddering breath in, stuck on the precipice of coming. That edge where you would do just about anything to get what you want. But that’s always her, isn’t it? She’d do anything.

“Fucking get me off,” she grits out between clenched teeth.

She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t want to know what Roman looks like right now, his pants bunched around his thighs, face flushed, cock gone limp. The element of surprise is on his side, ceded by her, and when he grabs her by the hair again, she shouts. He pulls her more upright, and Shiv leans back, her knees aching against the floor.

Roman leans forward. He pants against her ear, his breath hot and gross. “You think I’d fucking give you anything? Do it yourself.” Shiv could laugh, but the noise he presses out of her is more warning than anything else. She moves fast. She swipes her leg back and around, like she’s fucking doing pilates, but it’s effective enough to render Roman off balance. She finally makes good and she shoves him off her, gets him on his back. Breath expels from him with a gasping, “ _oof,_ ” as he lands.

Shiv looks down at him. He’s breathing hard, his eyes glassy, openly and bizarrely more turned on now than he was when he was shoving his dick against her ass. He licks his lips. She’s more turned on, too.

“I said,” she says, “get me off.”

Shiv lunges for him before he can say anything. Do anything. She plants her knees on either side of his face, her legs spread and open, her cunt over his face. She imagines that power again, eclipsing everything, leaving only her, as she lowers herself to meet his face. Beneath her, Roman whines, greedy and eager. He thought he had pushed it too far? She’ll push it further. She settles against him, her cunt smearing wetly against his chin before she pushes against his mouth. He immediately opens to her, his tongue licking messily against her, inside her, noisy and wet as he works. He whines even now, muffled by her. The fact that his jaw must hurt only makes this that much more pleasurable for her. The sounds he make climb higher as it’s her this time who has him by the hair. She pulls. She can feel her own mouth moving as she tells him he’s useless, he’s pathetic, disgusting, not without a bit of pride when there is no tremble to her voice to match her legs. She shakes over him, she drips. Roman’s hands reach up to palm her ass as he presses his face against her, eating at her. It’s nowhere near the best she’s ever had, but easily the most fucked up, the most akin to conquest. To victory. That counts for everything. Winning, she thinks, as her eyes flutter closed. She tilts her head back. She clenches hot and wet against his mouth, nearly there. Almost there. Almost. It’s the only thing that matters.


End file.
